Why LaTeX?

Lance Fortnow laments that no matter how crotchety he gets he can't seem to give up LaTeX:

LaTeX is a great system for mathematical documents...for the 1980s. But the computing world changed dramatically and LaTeX didn't keep up. Unlike Unix I can't give it up. I write papers with other computer scientists and mathematicians and since they use LaTeX so do I. LaTeX still has the best mathematics formulas but in almost every other aspect it lags behind modern document systems.

I think LaTeX is better than he gives it credit for. I also think it could use a reboot. It really is a system from the 80s, and it's... interesting how many systems from the 70s and 80s are still the best of breed, still in wide use, but still not really getting any new development.

Here's my hate list for LaTeX:

• The grammar is idiosyncratic, poorly documented, and context-dependent. There's no need for any of that. There are really good techniques nowadays for having a very extensible language nonetheless have a base grammar that is consistent in every file and supports self-documentation.
  
• You can't draw outside the lines. For all the flexibility the system ought to have due to its macro system, I find the many layers of implementation to be practically impenetrable. Well written software can be picked up by anyone, explored, and modified. Not so with LaTeX--you have to do things exactly the way the implementers imagined, or you are in for great pain and terrible-looking output.
  
• The error messages are often inscrutable. They may as well drop all the spew and just say, "your document started sucking somewhere around line 1308".
  
• The documentation is terrible. The built-in documentation is hard to find and often stripped out anyway. The Internet is filled with cheesy "how to get started" guides that drop off right before they answer whatever question you have.
  
• Installing fonts is a nightmare. There are standalone true-type fonts nowadays. You should be able to drop in a font and configure LaTeX to use it. That this is not possible suggests that the maintainers are as afraid of the implementation as I am.
  
• Files are non-portable and hard to extract. This problem is tied up in the implementation technology. Layered macros in a global namespace are not conducive to careful management of dependencies, so everything tends to depend on everything.
  

However, as bad as that list is, the pros make it worth it:

• Excellent looking output, especially if you use any math. If you care enough to use something other than ASCII, I would think that the document appearance trumps just about any other concern.
  
• Excellent collaborative editing. You can save files in version control and use file-level merge algorithms effectively. With most document systems, people end up mailing each other the drafts, which is just a miserable way to collaborate.
  
• Scripting and macros. While you can't reasonably change LaTeX itself, what you can easily do is add extra features to the front end by way of scripts and macros.
  
• It uses instant preview instead of WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG editors lead to quirky problems that are easy to miss in proofreading, such as headers being at the wrong level of emphasis. While I certainly want to see what the output will look like all the time, I don't want to edit that version. I want to edit the code. When you develop something you really want to be good, you want very tight control.
  
• Scaling. Many document systems develop problems when a document is more than 10-20 pages long. LaTeX keeps on chugging for at least up to 1000-page documents.
  

I would love to see a LaTeX reboot. The most promising contender I know of is the Lout document formatting system, but it appears to not be actively maintained.